Inverse Thermoelastic Analysis of a Cylindrical Tribo-Couple

Within the framework of the one-dimensional model for a tribo-couple consisting of two elastic cylinders accounting for the frictional heat generation on the interface due to the roughness of the contacting dissimilar materials, a problem on the identification of the unknown temperature on one of the limiting surfaces of either inner or outer cylindrical layers is formulated and reduced to an inverse thermoelasticity problem via the use of the circumferential strain given on the other surface. To solve the latter problem, a semi-analytical algorithm is suggested, and its stability with respect to the small errors in the input data is analyzed. The efficiency of the proposed solution algorithm is validated numerically by comparing its results with the solution of a corresponding direct problem. The temperature and thermal stresses in the tribo-couple are analyzed.